Month: November 2010
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In my family, we have a Thanksgiving tradition. Instead of saying a prayer, we go around the table and say at least one thing for which we are grateful. Six years ago, my family found out that Kim was having twins when she said she was grateful for them. You could’ve heard a fork drop. This year, I won’t be with my family for Thanksgiving. We’ll be in Green Bay with Dustin’s family and that’s okay. But, I didn’t want to miss out on saying those things for which I am grateful. So, here they are in no particular order.

Jarred, Portia, Tyler, Caitlen, Danny, Alex, Ashlyn, PJ, Nicolas, Carson, and Thomas. Having children in my life is the greatest joy. I am grateful for being allowed to touch their lives , to be a part of watching all of them grow up and (for Jarred, Portia, Tyler and Caitlen) watching them move from childhood to adulthood. I love each and every one of you more than you will ever know.

My extended family. There’s something to be said about coming from a large family. I have cousins from nearly one side of this country (Utah) to the other (Washington D.C.) and from top (Minnesota) to bottom (Florida). I don’t get to see all of them very often, but I know that if I needed one of them at any time, they’re all just a phone call away. So, thank you, family. Being a Totsch is probably the luckiest thing to ever happen to me. If you’re lucky enough to be a Totsch, you’re lucky enough. 🙂

My brothers – Scott and Brian – and their wives – Robyn and Tara. I can’t imagine what life would be as an only child and I have been blessed to never have to find out.

My parents. I don’t always like them and I’m sure they don’t always like me, but I’m grateful for them being in my life. I know people who have had a harder time with their parents than I have had. For that, I am grateful.

My friends. It is said that one is rich if one has a lot of friends. Well, that is certainly the case for me. I am blessed with friends who love me for me. Yes, they roll their eyes when I go on a tirade about any subject near to my heart and they kid me for being long winded, but they’re always there for me. I’d list them all, but I think the blog has a text limit. Two that come to mind are Jerri and Preston. Where would Cheryl and I be without the two of you in our lives?

My job. Oh, my job. Like most people, some days are better at work than others, but – especially in these hard economic times – I am eternally grateful for my job. I’m doing what I love and getting paid to do it. On the bad days, I remember that this pays the bills and on the good days, well, I can’t believe I get paid for having this much fun. Yeah, there goes my friends rolling their eyes because I REALLY LOVE writing SQL code. Best of all, my employer makes you feel like you’ve joined their family and I am grateful that I have been able to join this family.

My co-workers. I’m the oldest person in the IT department, so it really feels like I’ve gained a bunch of little brothers and a sister. We tease each other, help each other and stick together like a real IT team should. Never in my life have I been able to work with such a fantastic team and, even when I’m bitching, I am very thankful for our IT family. I have been able to hone my SQL skills like never before. It has been an amazing ride since I started working here and I look forward to what our future holds.

My country. Oh, we have some issues, but I wouldn’t want to live in any other country. I love America. I love being an American. I’m proud of our flag, our Constitution and all that it means. We’re going through tough times, but we will make it. I truly believe that we are the greatest nation on the planet. I thank God everyday to be living in the land of the free.

My life. I’ve had good times and bad times and every single one of them has made me the person I am today. I am grateful for the lows through which I have gone for they have made me so appreciative of the highs. If you see only the sun everyday, how can you appreciate the easy days? There must be a time for struggles that make you stronger, so you can take a breath and enjoy the easy side of the street. I have had things happen in my life I didn’t think I would survive and, yet, like the song says, “I’m Still Here.” So, thank you, God, for giving me this life.

My God. I’m not sure how to put this, except to quote the Kris Kristofferson song, “What did I ever do that was worth loving you, For the kindness you’ve shown.”

Finally, my wife – Cheryl. In the words of Alex, “Holy Crap!” I know it hasn’t been easy being with me. We’ve had good times and bad. I hope that at the end of our lives there’ll be more pennies in the good times jar than in the bad times jar. I am pretty sure that I have never done anything in life to deserve being loved by a woman as wonderful as you. You put up with my socks on the floor and you give me magic drawers. Without you in my life, well, none of this would be worth it. What fun could it possibly be if I didn’t have you to share in all of it? In the words of Jackie Gleason, “Baby, you’re the greatest!”

To all of you reading this blog post, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope that you all can count abundant blessings in your life. If you can’t today, well, tomorrow is another day and I hope you can then.

My Liberal Identity

You are a Social Justice Crusader, also known as a rights activist. You believe in equality, fairness, and preventing neo-Confederate conservative troglodytes from rolling back fifty years of civil rights gains.

My Conservative Identity:

You are a Values Guardian, also known as a cultural conservative. You believe in protecting the American way of life and fighting a culture war against liberal moonbats and the lapdogs in the lamestream media who are out to destroy decent, moral Americans like Sarah Palin for daring to defend traditional values.

I’m going to showcase twenty different charities between 12/1 and 12/20 on the website. Here is your chance to push for a charity to be featured. Just comment below or send me a note about your favorite charity and why you like it. Only rule: these must be non-profits and I’d prefer charities with websites to which I can link, but if you provide contact information, I will post that.

Then, sit back and watch to see if your charity is one of the chosen ones.

You might know this all ready or you might not, but Jennifer Gray won the ABC competition “Dancing with the Stars”. I know the question on your mind is: Where did Bristol place? And, you can find the article that answers that question here.

And, here is the comment I posted there. I wouldn’t want you to miss it.

And, here we go yet again, spending more time discussing the LOSER of something than the WINNER. Jennifer Gray won the contest both in talent (based on her perfect scores) and in votes. So, why are we discussing Bristol? Why have we decided in this country to celebrate the losers in anything? For another example that proves my point take Sunday’s Green Bay vs Minnesota. The announcers spent so much time discussing Brett Favre and his losing team that they went into a commercial claiming the Vikings were up by 21 points, when they were losing by 21 points. Getting back to DWTS, I have nothing against Bristol Palin but we shouldn’t be discussing her anymore. She lost. Her mother lost an election and she’s in the news every other day. Game over. I’d rather read an article about how Jennifer Gray competed with an injury.

It must be Sarah Palin’s day here at Top Of My Head – three articles in one day. But, the Palins are headline grabbers, so here goes.

According to an article on MSNBC, the ratings for Sarah Palin’s Alaska are down – a lot. I’m not surprised. The show received a lot of hype, a lot of attention, Palin is a name, so ratings would be high for the original broadcast. It isn’t unusual for any reality show to lose viewers. I was speaking with my friend, Preston, this weekend and he said he couldn’t believe that I wasn’t watching the show. I told him I wasn’t interested in Sarah Palin’s Alaska. It isn’t my cup of tea. To be honest, the show could be called Katie Couric’s Alaska and I still wouldn’t be interested. I’m not a nature show watcher.

But, the article mentions Andy Almon, Willow’s boyfriend. I guess he appears on the show, which makes me a little confused. I thought Sarah Palin’s show was all about Alaska. A travelogue, if you will, about what to see when you’re in Alaska. I thought it would show forests and ice flows or whatever it is they have in Alaska. So, what’s Willow’s boyfriend doing on the show? How does he work into this?

So, if I’m reading the article right, the show is like “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” mixed with a pretty, woodsy outdoors?

I’m a little more than surprised. I would think that Palin would keep her children out of it as much as possible. A nice nature – come see Alaska – show would probably serve her better than to show family meltdowns and drama.

Sarah Palin appeared on Sean Hannity’s show last night. Hannity asked her this question: “You actually use the phrase ‘I fear for our democracy’. What did you mean by that?”

Here is Palin’s verbatim answer: “I do. I fear for our democracy. Because, um, I recognize and I know you did, too, Sean and you try to sound a warning bell uh, through your commentary through the campaign as I was nominated for VP and running with one of my heroes, Senator John McCain, as we were witnessing what the other campaign was actually telling America people warning them what they were going to do to America. They warned Barack Obama did as candidate that he would fundamentally transform America. That he would redistribute somebody’s wealth. He would take it and give it to somebody else. Those things that do erode our free market and our freedoms and our disincentives to a strong work ethic and productivity and now what see are some manifestations of what he had warned us of what he would do in that campaign. We’re seeing that come home to roost now. We see with the quantitative easing of the feds that Barack Obama has now come out and supported as the fed says that we’re going to print more money out of thin air and we’re going to incur more debt and we’re going to devalue our dollar and we’re going to mess with China’s currency and we’re going to preach to them that they can’t be messing with it, but we’re be messing with our own. All these things that are taking place right now. Especially this occurrence of this huge debt, Sean. What it is doing is eroding our opportunities which eventually erodes our democracy and our freedoms. And, we cannot succeed this way – this is no way – with the quantitative easing, with this new 600 billion dollar infusion of fake money into our system. That’s not how we get our economy back on the right track. We became the foremost super power by incentivizing producers and job creators and work ethic, not by punishing work ethic, but that’s exactly what Barack Obama and those in the White House and leftists in Congress are doing to our economy and our job creators. They’re disincentizing our work ethic.”

I was going to call this article Sarah Palin – Hypocrite, but then I went and looked up the definition of hypocrite and realized that it didn’t apply. Imagine that, I’ve been using hypocrite incorrectly for most of my life. A hypocrite is someone who does one thing and says another. Sarah Palin is many things, but she certainly doesn’t spout off things she doesn’t believe. At least I don’t think she does. And, thanks to my newly understanding of the word hypocrite, it turns out that I’m not one either.

I was reading my Bloomberg BusinessWeek and I saw an article on page 44 with the title “Duck, Sugar! It’s a Food Fight”. (The online version calls it: “Sarah Palin Stews Over Government Food Rules”.) Now, as most people know, since her husband became President, Michelle Obama has been working to improve the health of our children and ourselves. The First Lady is passionate about ending childhood obesity, which I believe is a good thing. Remember when we were kids? The only time we were inside a house was when it rained. We ran around, played sports and didn’t come home until we heard Mr. Robinson’s famous (at least in our neighborhood) whistle. Our Moms and Dads would have dinner on the table and we rarely went to a fast food restaurant. We didn’t have to worry about what we ate, we burned calories at a massive rate. Childhood was our diet plan.

Kids today grow up eating McDonald’s like it is part of the food pyramid. With all of their after school activities, they don’t have time to run around the neighborhood. It’s no wonder their little bodies are getting pretty thick around the middle.

According to the article, the government revises the guidelines every five years. On this go around, the guidelines are pretty strict about salt and sugar intakes. As we’ve been hearing in the past year or so, we eat too much salt in this country. Changing the food pyramid to reflect these facts sounds like a good thing to me. But, apparently, to the right wing, the Tea Party and even to Mama Grizzly herself, getting our kids healthy is not a priority the government should undertake. Somehow, they make these guidelines out to be the devil. Now, I just don’t get it.

What is the big deal with working with the companies who feed our children their school lunches and get them to “pledged to double the amount of fruit and vegetables in their meals within 10 years?” How can that be a bad thing? It’s not even mandated by law. But, to Sarah Palin and the gang, it’s big-government interference. According to the article, ” she showed up at a Pennsylvania school bearing dozens of cookies, a gesture intended to show her disapproval of a state proposal to limit the sweets served in public schools.” Has the woman hit her head? Or, is she and the right wing so adamant about their beliefs, so rigid that they can’t see what is a good thing?

On top of that, I thought the right-wing gang believed in states’ rights? So, wouldn’t the State of Pennsylvania have the right to determine what is served in school lunches?

Sometimes, I wonder if that woman is just crazy and then I think, she’s crazy like a fox. She knows to keep up the anti-everything rhetoric, because I can’t believe for a second that any good mother wouldn’t want nutritional facts on the food they serve their kids and wouldn’t want their kids to have healthy choices for their school lunch? How is it possible that Sarah Palin would come out swinging about making healthy decisions when feeding out kids? What is wrong with her? This seems like a no-brainer to me.

I just finished watching tonight’s “Mike and Molly” show and I have to say, I was disappointed. Oh, don’t get me wrong, the episode was hilarious. I laughed until I cried. Mike’s mother giving Molly that hat. And, using egg salad as a code word – Priceless!

Having Mike invite their network of friends and having to purchase a bird that wouldn’t fit in the oven! It’s every person’s Thanksgiving nightmare.

But, then, at the end with that so ugly he’s cute dog walking under the table being fed food – you, sir, went way to far with the sentiment! Having that poor little dog sit there while Mike and Molly held hands brought tears to my eyes! It was the sweetest thing!

Do you know who this man is? His name is Bryan Fischer and he writes a blog on the Rightly Concerned website, which is an arm of the American Family Association. In addition, his blog runs on a website called “The Moral Liberal”. Getting back to Fischer, you should know who he is. He is a dangerous man. People read his blog and believe the slander that he writes. On Tuesday, November 16, 2010 – just five days after one of most important days we celebrate as Americans – Veteran’s Day; this enemy to American Soldiers every where wrote “We have feminized the Medal of Honor”.

Apparently, this so-called “man of God” believes that it is wrong to “award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them.” He goes on to say “when are we going to start awarding the Medal of Honor once again for soldiers who kill people and break things so our families can sleep safely at night?”

And, there you have it in a nutshell the absolute truth at the heart of the entire right wing. They’re only happy when someone (usually of a brownish color) is dead or dying. Okay, I’m taking it a bit far. I don’t believe every single right wing person believes this, but guys like Fischer and his band of phony Christians do.

A wise man once said: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” If you’re wondering who said it, it was our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. (John 15:13) Just a couple of facts I found out, more than half of Medal of Honor Recipients receive them posthumously. Near as I can tell, Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta – who received his award from President Obama on the same day Fischer wrote his crappy blog – is the first living recipient since 1975.

The Medal of Honor Recipients risk their lives for not just their country, but their fellow soldiers as well. These are people who did not look out for their own best interests. They were unselfish, as a great many of our service men and women are.

And, Bryan Fischer is a despicable person to slur what the Medal of Honor means. Check this out:

“The bottom line here is that the God of the Bible clearly honors those who show valor and gallantry in waging aggressive war in a just cause against the enemies of freedom, even while inflicting massive casualties in the process. What I’m saying is that it’s time we started imitating God’s example again.”

Except, the man does not know that which he is proclaiming to speak. The definition of valor is:

“strength of mind or spirit that enables a person to encounter danger with firmness : personal bravery”

Neither of these definitions say anything about being aggressive or God. Valor simples means having courage in the face of dangerous odds. But, not to Fischer, somehow he missed all of Jesus’ turn the other cheek speeches. He missed the part in the Bible where Peter cuts off the soldier’s ear and Jesus stops him from doing more harm. I don’t believe that God would believe that the only act of a soldier that we as a country should honor is one in which the soldier killed multiple enemies. There is room to honor both.

Fischer doesn’t seem to understand that. But, he and the American Family Association are part of what is going wrong in this country. There’s no room for tolerance in Fischer’s America. There’s no room for laying down a life for a friend. There’s only room for telling people who are to blame for their lot in life and just a hint — it isn’t them.

I’m not saying that Fischer shouldn’t be allowed to write this garbage, I’m just saying that an intelligent and reasonable person shouldn’t read it.